Event planner finds her forte with new Cape Girardeau tea lounge

Toni Shelton thought her new business, For+Té Tea Lounge and Eventeur, would be a hit with college students. What she did not expect was to find, during a soft opening, just how popular the concept of a tea lounge would be.

“I’ve had people from all different walks and ages saying they love tea. Everyone is saying we don’t have something like this here so they’re all very excited to come. I know my demographic needs to be really honed in, so I’m just going to say tea lovers,” Shelton said.

For+Té, at 120 Broadway in Cape Girardeau, opens on Wednesday, Nov. 13. Its hours are from 9:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday. The business offers a selection of various teas for customers to order either individually or communally.

“We do curate our own little special blends here and there. It’s fun to create special brews and drinks,” Shelton said.

The lounge sells tisanes and, in the near future, will add hors d’oeuvres to the menu and collaborate with other local eateries. For+Té also offers bagged tea blends and merchandise for sale.

Though it is Shelton’s first foray into operating a storefront, it isn’t her first business endeavor. She also runs ARTÉA Wedding & Event Planning and Design, with a moniker based on her maiden name Artega. In a way, the name of her new tea lounge also derives from there.

“My maiden name means ‘place of the woods,’ ‘oak grove’ in Spanish … it just reflected strength, and oak is strong and tall. My LLC being an event planning business, I’d always ask people … what’s your forte? It just came to me, forte. Because my forte is serving tea, hospitality,” Shelton said.

In addition, the word té means tea in Spanish, so the lounge is literally “for té”.

“It actually has a triple meaning. In Italian, forte, if you know anything about music, means loud and strong. Gabriele (Ruggieri, a Cape Girardeau restaurant owner from Milan, Italy) comes in and he says, 'forte, I love the name, it means strength.' I was a music major, so it didn’t ever occur,” Shelton said.

Shelton will still take up event planning at For+Té. She said the tea lounge would be able to cater special menus for weddings, birthday parties and baby and bridal showers.

“It wasn’t a phase, it was something I’m meant to do. And it just keeps pouring out of me. I was doing events and all these things for people all the time and loved it,” she said.

In the spirit of Shelton’s forte, the tea lounge will also offer a variety of events such as Chinese and Japanese tea ceremonies and English high tea.

“Part of my mission here is I love to educate people about tea and culture. I used to teach cultural education, so it just segues right into what I love,” she said.

Shelton said she is learning new things, herself, about customs and how they incorporate tea. She sources her foreign blends directly from those nations due to her friends and family overseas recommending which flavors to purchase.

For+Té’s soft launch was held in the weeks before its official opening. From this, Shelton and her team of three employees examined pricing, saw which items were the most popular and learned the hands-on process of running a business.

Shelton had a vision brewing in her mind about serving teas and began journaling about it. She visited with her daughter and son-in-law, who own Golden Eagle Tattoo in downtown Cape Girardeau, and saw a sign for the property at 120 Broadway. She said she is a spiritual person and felt a nudge to learn more about it. The property owner liked her pitch and she signed a lease for the building April 8, the morning of the 2024 solar eclipse. The interim was spent acquiring permit licenses and decorating the establishment in an art nouveau style.

“I’ve never done anything like this in my life. Owning a storefront is huge. I actually tell people it’s scarier than getting married and having a baby. For me, it was,” she said. “… It’s a lot of work, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. It’s a dream come true.”

The tea lounge will celebrate the grand opening with a ribbon-cutting at 3 p.m. on its opening day. Shelton said a larger celebration would take place in the spring or summer.

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